


Safe and Sound

by onethingsuniversal



Category: The Prom (2020), The Prom - Sklar/Beguelin/Martin
Genre: Accidents, Baby, Baby-Proofing, F/F, Fluff, Greenelan as Parents, Hurt/Comfort, Oh look it's another Rosie-Fic, Toddler, how on earth this got over 4k i will never know, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:02:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29051826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onethingsuniversal/pseuds/onethingsuniversal
Summary: Having a toddler was, as Emma was learning, constantly surprising. It was exhausting and stressful among a whole host of other things, but it was also the most incredible thing she had ever done, and she wouldn’t exchange it for the world. She’d never really anticipated herself having children but after they got married the conversation had come up and she then found herself, almost four years later, parent to a two-year-old who had quickly become one of the best things that had ever happened to her.orAlyssa compulsively baby-proofs their house before their daughter arrives, there are sometimes where it's a curse, sometimes where it's a blessing and other times where it made no difference at all.
Relationships: Alyssa Greene & Emma Nolan, Alyssa Greene/Emma Nolan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 26





	Safe and Sound

**Author's Note:**

> hello! back so soon you ask? well i wasn't planning to write this but it just kind of happened and the tag was lacking in rosie content so here you are. kate and i had this idea ages ago and the start was sat in my drafts for ages but i'm pretty happy with it.
> 
> i hope you like the kind of silly concept, honestly alyssa in some of this is great so i hope you love it!
> 
> shoutout to kate ig but also she's rlly inpatient so not too big of a shoutout.
> 
> enjoy!!
> 
> (title from safe & sound by tswift)(you thought i was done with that? think again)

Having a toddler was, as Emma was learning, constantly surprising. It was exhausting and stressful among a whole host of other things, but it was also the most incredible thing she had ever done, and she wouldn’t exchange it for the world. She’d never really anticipated herself having children but after they got married the conversation had come up and she then found herself, almost four years later, parent to a two-year-old who had quickly become one of the best things that had ever happened to her. Emma thought that the love she felt for her wife would be the most intense feeling she ever had to grapple with because every day it increased tenfold. But then she held her minutes-old daughter for the first time and that previous glass ceiling soon shattered as she was overwhelmed by an entirely new kind of love as it coursed through her veins, there was a unique kind of refreshing beauty that came with taking in the slightly smushed baby that she could already tell was the absolute double of her wife. Looking down at the fresh life she felt complete for the first time in her life even though she didn’t even know something had been missing. Too many people had told her that she’d miss out on those special initial bonding moments because she wasn’t carrying her, and she wasn’t biologically related to the child. Emma would have liked to say she hadn’t worried but that wouldn’t have been true, she had stressed that once she arrived the infant wouldn’t feel the connection that everybody raved about- but they couldn’t have been more wrong. All it had taken was once glance and she knew that she would go to any length to protect Rosie and any shadow of a doubt she had about not feeling like she was ‘actually’ her daughter was nowhere to be seen. She was her mama and she always would be, there was nothing she was surer of.

That instinct of wanting to make sure that everything was as perfect as it possibly could be for the baby had only grown as her confidence increased in her new role as mama. Now the once tiny baby was a very opinionated toddler who could walk and talk and argue she seemingly found entertainment in putting herself in the most dangerous scenarios she possibly could. Emma tried to be laid back about it. Alyssa had traditionally taken the role of the overanxious parent and tried to stop her from doing anything that could result in even the smallest of bumps or scratched but Emma thought that in this case, that was a little much. After all she wouldn’t learn if she didn’t try things, she reasoned often, whilst Rosie was scaling the couch or climbing into the laundry hamper that looked fit to topple over. Kids would be kids and the occasional injury was a small price to pay for the excitement of exploring new things- it was only natural. Besides, the situations that Rosie even had access to cause havoc in had been reduced drastically by the amount of babyproofing that had been put into place, long before she’d even been born.

Like most expecting parents Emma and Alyssa wanted to be as prepared as they possibly could be by the time their firstborn arrived. They did all the usual things- downloaded apps that told them exactly which parts of the baby was developing and when, collected countless numbers of flyers at every appointment that detailed exactly what they’d need in those first weeks and Alyssa’s favourite- they read books, loads of them. Alyssa had always been book smart, so as soon as she found out she was pregnant she’d been at the library checking out every book with even the slightest mention of pregnancy in the title. She ended up with a few duds, strange romance novels depicting a love triangle ending with a baby, but by which man? That whole concept was ridiculous to a rather strait-laced Alyssa who obviously had never found herself in a situation near that. But there were a few good ones that were actually informative and all of those seemed to have chapters upon chapters about keeping baby safe, specifically using various plastic locks and clips you could buy at any half-decent baby store. Alyssa was a safety nut, she’d been the debate team’s health and safety leader for any excursions they went on, by the end of her time as debate club leader she had become quite the professional at completing risk assessments and applying band-aids when things eventually went wrong- usually to Emma’s fingers after she got a rather nasty papercut or two from thumbing with her notecards nervously. So, of course, she wanted to put any safety measures in place to prevent any injuries to her child as soon as possible despite the fact that they were quite literally still inside of her. But by almost her due date the most crucial step in the whole entire preparation, according to Alyssa, still hadn’t been done and one night she was compelled to change that.

Nesting was in fact, as Emma learnt the hard way, a real thing. So, she wasn’t entirely surprised when she was woken up a gone three am to Alyssa clunking around somewhere in the apartment. Usually, she would have fallen back asleep but considering their daughter’s impending arrival and her wife’s famous stubbornness she decided she would get up and go and investigate- just in case anything important was actually happening. So, she reached blindly for her glasses from her bedside table and shuffled out of their room, pulling on a pair of sweatpants as she went to find out what was causing all the noise. 

When she got to their kitchen, she found Alyssa reaching up to the cabinet, that they kept drinking glasses in, in a way that could not have been comfortable nor easy in her current condition. Emma couldn’t help but shake her head at the sight, and quickly walked up to her to attempt to give her a hand with whatever chore she had decided must be done right at that moment. She couldn’t really blame her, she knew sleep was becoming harder for her to find as time ticked on and they were both incredibly anxious as they waited for the pending arrival that would be ‘any day now’ according to the last doctor’s appointment they’d attended, so what else could she do other than make sure they were prepared as they possibly could be.

“Alyssa what are you doing?” Emma asked, placing a hand on her back to maybe ease some of the strain she was definitely putting on her back, that concerned her more than she’d care to admit, the last thing they needed was for her to get injured, she was already uncomfortable as it was.

“I’m just—” a small click sounded, and Alyssa screeched for joy, alarming Emma in her currently sleep-hazed state, “Boom! Got it!” she exclaimed but Emma could barely string a sentence together in her mind to find out what it was that she had actually ‘got’ so she didn’t even try and instead waited for Alyssa to speak again.

“I was just installing the last of the cupboard clips from that big thing of baby-proofing stuff we bought last weekend.” Alyssa explained, like it was the most casual thing to be doing in the middle of the night.

“Oh- alright… couldn’t you have waited? Till the morning maybe, I could have helped.” Emma suggested, a little stumped by the seeming lapse of logic regarding timing from her usually very sensible wife.

“I just had to do it, but you looked peaceful, so I didn’t want to wake you up, Anyway, those are done now and I’m going to go and finish putting the corner pads on all of the nursery furniture now, I think… You can go to bed if you like, I’m quite happy to do it.” Alyssa suggested brightly, noticing the way Emma was rubbing at her eyes, a tell-tale sign she was still sleepy. If Alyssa was exhausted you wouldn’t be able to tell, though Emma suspected that she was so overtired she was probably verging on delirium and because of that she didn’t really trust her to be alone in the nursery that she’d personally spent so long painting and perfecting. Who knows, maybe she’d wake up to the lavender walls wrapped in bubble wrap?

“I’ll help, or just keep you company or something, though you do realise it’ll be months before she can even sit up, let alone be tall enough to hit her head on the changing table, we’re probably good for a while yet…” Emma pointed out, though it fell on deaf ears as Alyssa went charging towards the door to their daughter’s newly completed bedroom. 

“Everything has to be perfect. We need to be good parents Emma.” Alyssa stated as she walked as fast as she could, which wasn’t very fast at all. 

“We’re going to be good parents; some plastic and foam isn’t going to decide that Lys.” Emma reassured her, looking her once over- asides from the fact that it was far too later, or early, to be awake, something still felt off to Emma and she couldn’t place her finger on it until it clicked.

“What are you looking at?” Alyssa asked, brows furrowed, her escapade to perfect their environment clearly derailed by the intent stare she could feel from her wife.

“Babe, aren’t you going to put some pants on or something? It’s freezing in here.” Emma asked her when she entered the pastel-themed room.

“No. I’m too warm, and nothing fits anyway.” Alyssa replied simply. 

Emma was utterly dumfounded by this strange version of her wife, she was always too cold, always- she’d leant her countless jumpers during the duration of their relationship. The last months it had felt like she was living with an alien- a nocturnal, hypochondriac alien, and she couldn’t wait for their daughter to be born, of course to meet her, but also just so she could have her usual Alyssa back. The new addition had already changed her life in ways she wasn’t able to fully comprehend yet.

It was almost as if Alyssa had been able to sense when that final step needed to be completed that soon, because not even a week later, Rosalie Nolan-Greene was born and brought home to the safest house on the entire block, thanks to her mom’s meticulous groundwork. The sheer number of pre-installed baby-proofed items that ranged from the kitchen cupboards to every plug in the whole damn house made life with a newborn probably harder than it needed to be. She’d lost count of how many times Alyssa had asked for a glass of water and she’d taken the screaming infant along for the journey, hoping that the movement might soothe her, only to have to wrestle with the stupid pieces of plastic, eventually give up and wash up one of the old mugs sat by the sink from the copious amounts of caffeine she’d been drinking to attempt to survive, and deliver it full of water to her wife, the baby significantly more distraught than she had been before. Or when she was trying to change a diaper and couldn’t get past the clasp that was in place to stop tiny fingers being smashed in the drawer to get out a clean diaper, so pee had gone everywhere, and a bath had been required. At least they knew that they worked though, if Emma- a full grown adult couldn’t break through them- then she was sure Rosie wouldn’t be able to either, especially since she couldn’t hold her own head up. Alyssa was a pro at getting into anything that was barricaded by the child-locks, of course she’d spent the time actually learning how to use them when she’d first put them in places, but Emma was far too impatient for that and continued to just force anything open as brashly as she could despite Alyssa explaining the gentler she was the easier it would be.

“It won’t open! Stupid thing.” Emma cursed under her breath as she tried to get an aspirin out of the bathroom cabinet for the headache that had been raging due to her distinct lack of sleep. Alyssa had heard her struggling and went in to help her, baby Rosie over one shoulder as she reached her free hand up to the lock her wife was taking issue with.

“Just be slower with it, it’s easy see- twist, push and then it’ll open.” Alyssa told her calmly, easily executing the movement and not even stirring the sleeping bundle in her other arm. Emma huffed at how easily she did it, she was convinced that she’d never crack it, and that they would be enemies until the day Rosie left home and she could finally get her revenge by daring each one of the rotten things down.

“If you’re not feeling good, then go and have a lay down for a while. You’ve had two of the night shifts in a row with her and we’re good to keep ourselves amused whilst you have a nap.” Alyssa offered, pulling her wife close enough to press a tender kiss to her forehead after she watched her desperately swallow a couple of the tablets.

“Thank you,” Emma said with a tired smile, enjoying their closeness before pulling away and trapsing to the room with the bed that was practically calling out to her. But Alyssa didn’t miss the quiet indignant mutter that fell from her lips.

“Better hope the bed hasn’t been baby-proofed yet.”

As much as she complained Emma was eventually grateful for the precautionary measures, especially since she worked out how to crack the more frequently used ones. Once Rosie started walking, far later than most of the toddlers at her various social groups but still eventually, the foam that had lined their coffee table for over a year came in handy and prevented many accidents when the girl would lose her balance and fall face first into it or when she’d taken a sudden interest in the plug sockets round the base of the TV and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t draw her attention away from them it wasn’t just Emma though. Alyssa had been especially glad that she’d put the catches that held the cupboards open when Rosie, aged two, was finally tall enough to read the little brass handles on the kitchen units and decided her favourite game was swinging on them as her mommy was cooking dinner.

“Rosie can you go and play with Mama just until dinner time please, baby? Alyssa pleaded as she was trying to map a way to drain the water from a hot pan of potatoes without putting the toddler in any danger.

“No- I fun here.” Rosie retorted, clinging onto the surprisingly strong handle and using her feet to climb up the cupboard door, leaving tiny dirty footprints on the gloss-finished doors, that Alyssa would eventually smile at as she wiped it away with a damp cloth that evening. It was tiring and absolutely hectic, but the toddler phase was her favourite so far, and the fact that their daughter now slept through the night after a few stories were read to her was also a bonus.

There was one instance where they had to change a set of the fastenings because the toddler was more observant than the parents had first expected her to be and had somehow managed to get into the drawer that Alyssa kept her makeup in. They shouldn’t have been surprised because watching her mommy get ready for the day was one of Rosie’s fascinations and she always was trying to get her little hands on an eye-shadow brush or one of the many lipsticks that lived in there. Emma had discovered the toddler sat on top of a sea of cosmetics and had barely been able to hold in the laughter at the bright red lipstick smeared across her mouth. Alyssa found it less funny, firstly that was a twenty-dollar shade now ruined and secondly, she ended up being the one to have to hold the squirmy two-year-old still enough to wipe as much of the vibrant stain off of her face as possible. When they asked her how she managed to open it she just told them she had copied mommy. They quickly swapped out the old one for something a little more complex to hopefully stop Rosie from being able to repeat the event. But from the back of it Alyssa had teased Emma constantly for at least a week because their toddler had managed to deduce how to work the child-lock far easier than Emma had when they’d first been installed.

But as much as they were prepared, they couldn’t be prepared for everything, and that included dangers that they didn’t yet make a magic preventative method for. In the most memorable instance, it was jumping.

Rosie had been learning how to jump on the trampoline in the garden she’d gotten for her last birthday that she’d finally gotten over her fear of and once she started jumping, she never stopped. Everything she did would include a skip in her step, be it walking to the grocery store or whilst brushing her teeth before bed. Emma and Alyssa had though it vaguely harmless, the toddler had always been fidgety so it didn’t make too much of a difference to daily life, that was until she started launching herself off of anything she could. This had started off as a fun game with Emma, a way to channel her endless need to bounce by making it a little more thrilling, but once Emma had called it quits with the game Rosie just kept doing it, whether anybody was there to catch her or not. The parents had tried to be extra vigilant once they realised Rosie hadn’t seen the same end that they had, but there was only so much they could do and that came blaringly obvious when a loud thud followed by a piercing scream echoed through the apartment. 

Emma was the first to react, she’d been sat on the same couch that Rosie had leaped from, replying to a few work emails on her phone as Rosie put together a puzzle on the table. As she rushed to grab Rosie up off of the floor, trying not to panic at the blood she could see on her daughter’s face, she felt guilty that she hadn’t even realised she’d gotten bored of the quiet activity, that wasn’t important though. She sat down on the nearest chair and cradled Rosie close to her, shushing her softly as she rocked the wailing child in her arms. She knew it was no use trying to figure out the extent of her injury until she’d calmed down just a little bit from the initial shock. As she held onto her, a very concerned looking Alyssa came in, rushing down to kneel next to the pair on the floor. She was usually the calm in situations like this, as much as she tried to avoid them happening in the first place, she was equally skilled at dealing with them if they did.

“What’s happened Ro?” Alyssa asked, looking more at Emma for an explanation of whatever incident had occurred as she tried to carefully brush unruly brown curls away from the toddler’s damp face and see the extent of the damage. 

“She jumped off the back of the couch before I could even notice, smacked her head on the floor I think.” Emma explained quietly, pressing quick kisses to the top of the toddler’s head, evidently rattled by what had happened, rubbing a comforting hand up the tiny shuddering body in her arms.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Alyssa sympathised with the girl, “Can I see your forehead please baby? in case we need to get a special ice pack for it.” The mother asked. Rosie turned her face towards her mom, taking a few big deep stuttering breaths like Emma instructed her to do as Alyssa discovered a rather impressive split on her temple, surrounded by bruising that had already started to bloom, she winced at the thought of how hard she must have hit the ground for this to have been the result. Emma peer down at her and took in the sore sight.

“You really got it good didn’t you love; you’re being so so brave Rosie.” Emma praised with a sad smile as Alyssa went to grab a damp flannel to clean the wound up with a little. She whimpered sadly at the sting when her mom pressed the fabric to her head, being as gentle as she could possibly be.

“Owie- stop mommy.” Rosie said tearfully.

“She’ll be done in a minute love, she’s just making sure it’s nice and clean” Emma told the girl, holding onto her hand tightly. She felt utterly helpless in the situation but the least she could do was hold her still so Alyssa could work out what they needed to do.

“I think this might need a stitch or two- maybe some glue.” Alyssa observed, she wasn’t too sure, but it seemed like the right thing to do was to take her to the emergency room, which was one of the aspects of parenting she’d been dreading.

“Oh fuck.” Emma breathed, unable to help herself. An afternoon in the ER with a sad toddler did not sound like her idea of much fun at all. She shot a worried look at her wife, guilt still coursing round her veins but before Alyssa could reassure either of them, she heard a quiet whisper.

“Fuck.” Rosie said, shaking her head sadly as she tried to reach a hand up to touch where it was hurting her so much. Alyssa intercepted it, placing a kiss to her little fist instead.   
As much as she didn’t want her to end up using language like that it served as a bit of a tension easer, she saw a slight bashful smile on Emma’s face as she heard it and she knew that the toddler didn’t actually know what it meant, so there was little to no harm in it.

“Rosie can we choose a different word to tell us how you’re feeling please?” she corrected her softly, making it a teaching moment instead of a telling off.

“Um- sad?” Rosie said, making sure that was ok with her mommy. Alyssa ended up telling her it was much kinder if she said ‘snap’ instead of the naughty word that Emma had said by accident, and that if she heard it again, she could tell mama off but she shouldn’t say it herself. The obedient toddler quickly took that on board, despite the pain she was in for the first time in her life- muttering snap under her breath a few times as Alyssa held the cloth to her cut to stop it bleeding so much.

The family did end up in the ER that afternoon and the parents ended up in debt for the emotional trauma of the three stitched the girl ended up needing through the form of ice cream- chocolate ice cream to be specific. It was an experience to say the least, and none of them wanted to have to pay another visit to the sterile environment any time soon. They always had been cautious, and she guessed that the safety measures would be around for a long while, especially since there was nothing quite like an accident of that sort to kick up a parent’s protective instinct. Even though she had always said Rosie needed to learn by trying things, Emma never wanted to have to hold her still for stitches again and by the end of the day she was ready to wrap her in cotton wool and be done with it. Besides from the stress, it served as a meaningful lesson to Rosie, that she shouldn’t jump off of things or she’d get hurt and at least when the nurse found out what had happened asked if the rest of their home was appropriately child-safe they could say without a shadow of a doubt that it was.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked this!!
> 
> comments & kudos are always appreciated, especially with these rosie ones! 
> 
> ALSO please somebody just write some of your own rosie content. i am not precious i just want to know people love her as much as i do! it would make my year (not to be dramatic)
> 
> :)


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